“Premeditated mass murder” just outside one of America’s most idyllic, envied campuses.
The statement in my headline comes from an article in The Daily Nexus, the UC Santa Barbara student newspaper.
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Update: There was only one shooter.
[A] YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” appeared to be connected to the killing spree.
In the video, a young man sits behind the wheel of a parked car and rants about how he’s been ignored by women at UCSB and that his sexual advances have been rejected. He promises to go to Isla Vista on Friday night to seek revenge against women — especially sorority members — by slaughtering them.
Rodger’s Facebook page indicates he’s from Calabasas, and shows him sitting in a black BMW coupe.
The gunman’s car was a black BMW coupe.
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My searching around online suggests the shooter may have been the son of a Los Angeles-based film director/photographer.
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A somewhat similar act of femicide.
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Confirmation: The shooter is the son of Peter Rodger, “a special unit director on The Hunger Games and director of Oh My God, a documentary the screened during the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.”
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There are of course also similarities to the Virginia Tech massacre: A mentally disturbed young man of college age makes an angry video promising revenge on a world that has disrespected him; he then gets a gun and starts shooting in areas full of college students.
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Incredibly, it gets worse. The shooter stabbed his three roommates to death before he began shooting near UC Santa Barbara.
Kind of a defensive headline, that. Why, when sleazeman Bobby Petrino (put “petrino” in my search engine) has again (this is a return gig) graced the University of Louisville not only with his presence, but with open practices, is everybody staying away?
[L]ess than [Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Make that Fewer than] 100 fans were on hand for Petrino’s first open practice inside Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.
Do you have any idea what one hundred people look like in a stadium built for 55,000 people?
One hell of an all-American headline.
… Chicago State University. Corrupt even by Illinois standards. An almost non-existent graduation rate. Ruled by one greedy hack after another. Frauds in high places. The functional equivalent of North Korea.
And now… (drum roll)…
A Cook County jury has awarded a former Chicago State University employee $2.5 million in damages and back pay after deciding he was fired in retaliation for reporting alleged misconduct by the university president and other top officials, an amount that a judge could further increase at a hearing next month.
… The lawsuit by former Chicago State senior legal counsel James Crowley alleged that he was fired in February 2010 after he refused to withhold documents about university President Wayne Watson’s employment that were requested by a faculty member under the state’s public records law. Crowley also claimed that he was retaliated against after reporting questionable contracts to the Attorney General’s office.
So what’ll it take to shut the place down?
Students are leaving in droves.
Is it possible Illinois will keep the shake-down operation going even without students???
Headline of the day.
(Don’t just read the transcript; watch the video.)
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A related article, and an expression of Okie pride:
[Y]ou don’t have to be literate to play and graduate from OSU.
… in Spring 2013; he helped his father with his gubernatorial campaign in 2009. But if reports are correct, something went very wrong: Gus Deeds apparently stabbed his father, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, and then shot himself to death.
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UPDATE:
[Gus] Deeds, who had withdrawn last month as a student at the College of William and Mary, underwent a mental health evaluation on Monday at a local hospital performed under an emergency custody order, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But the son was released from Bath County Community Hospital because no psychiatric beds were available across a wide area of western Virginia, the paper reported.
… University Bloomington. Odd hour and day for a sighting, a lockdown. Five, six, on a Sunday morning.
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Students fighting; one had a knife and used it. Non-lethally.
This story just appeared on the news; it’s much too soon to know what’s going on. I’ll follow it.
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It seems to be over, with no gunshots having been fired. Ezra Klein was giving a lecture at the time; everyone was evacuated to the basement of the building.
… be my guest. I’ve spent most of the day admiring it.